See how it looked in 1966

‘First Lady’ leads India

Mrs. Ghandi chosen

By Sharokh Sabavala | Special correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

New Delhi

Hopes and fears of 500 million Indians are centered today in their first woman Prime Minister - Mrs. Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, born Nehru.

Hopes are raised by her comparative youth - she is in her 49th year - her background and heritage, her forward-looking outlook, and her sincere, many times tested love of country and people.

Concern arises of her inexperience, her well-known aversion to the rough and tumble of politics, and the manner in which she has been pitchforked into this first-ever contest for party leadership. Mrs. Gandhi, in the absence of her mother, acted as India’s “First Lady” for her father when he was Prime Minister. She knew his inmost thoughts and views on world and domestic affairs.

Machinery mobilized

She has currently responded to the call because her senior party colleagues - party president, chief minister, and state leaders - have felt that she was the only candidate who in a straight election could thwart the challenge of former Finance Minister Morarji Desai.

This leadership’s desire to divert the Desai challenge evidently springs from the conviction that Mr. Desai may be too rigid and unbending.

The entire powerful party machine was mobilized for her support against any single individual. It is asked here whether this was necessary.

Wearing a shawl, togalike, with a single red rose, made famous by her father, pinned to it, Mrs. Gandhi strode to the prime ministership of the world’s most populous democracy.

Not a landslide

In the party election just ended she received 355 votes to her rival Morarji Desai’s 169.
This isn’t considered the landslide her supporters expected after the whole party machinery had been geared to her aid.

Both she and her rival emphasized in postelection speeches the need once again to close party ranks in view of the country’s immense difficulties.

“This is a great, proud nation” said the Prime Minister designate, “and I am now ordered to be its leading servant - a ‘desh sevika,’ meaning worker for country.”

She expressed confidence in “the inner strength” of a people who for centuries have withstood hardship and travail. Together with them she pledged to tread the path of peace and progress.
Mr. Shastri, she added, gave his life for peace. “Let us carry his work to full fruition,” she said.

Mr. Desai, promising loyalty and support, pleaded for continued fearlessness in public and private life. The vote for him, observers feel, shows he remains a considerable influence in national life. The new Prime Minister-Elect later may try to absorb this influence into her Cabinet.

Support awaits

In the murk of doubts created by preelection procedures and party tactics, Communists have jumped in, unasked, to her support, creating more doubts about some of her self-proclaimed followers who are said to have Communist fellow-traveler tints.

Throughout the last days of intense speculation and strain, Mrs. Gandhi behaved with restraint and dignity, keeping her own counsels.

In the present Cabinet and government service she will find support and expert guidance from some very experienced men. To her support openly have rallied Acting Prime Minister Gulzarilal Nanda, Defense Minister Y. B. Chavan, and Planning Commission chief Asoka Mehta.

Awards listed

Mrs. Gandhi is winner of the Mothers Award, United States 1953; Yale University’s Howland Memorial Prize of 1960; and the Isabella Deste Medal for outstanding work in the field of diplomacy (1965). She was educated in Switzerland, India, and at Oxford.

Her political reputation is that of a party left-winger but this correspondent has never known her views to be crystallized. In the past she has said she is not really interested in politics. Over many years the burden of public life has been carried by her with patient resignation but no pleasure.

She is a personal friend of United States Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey and Mr. John F. Kennedy. The mother of two sons now finishing school in the United Kingdom, she is reported to be quick, mercurial, sensitive, the civilized product of streams of East West cultures.